The trials of Edgar Presley Mint begin on an Apache reservation in Arizona at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. Shunted from the hospital to a school for delinquents, then to a Mormon foster family, the boy's search for the mailman takes him on a string of larger-than-life experiences. Through it all Edgar never loses heart, and his quest leads him to an unexpected home.

"An odyssey through the New West, where affluent Mormons and dead-end reservation kids share the same zip code and the same climate, but little else. Edgar, the wounded, utterly orphaned, and utterly courageous narrator of Brady Udall's outstanding novel, would have pleased Dickens no end. Enmeshed in these pages is some of the finest writing I've come across in a long time."—Junot Díaz